Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
Overview
“The story of workers in the vineyard, in Matthew 20:1-16, is my all-time favourite parable because I need to be reminded that it’s not about me!
Of course, the workers who have “borne the burden of the day and endured the scorching heat” are furious when those “who worked only one hour” get paid the same amount.
Just as the prophet, in Jonah 3:10-4:11, is furious that God is prepared to show “abounding and steadfast love” to his enemies as well as to him.
We know that everything we are and everything we have is a gift from God. Yet we still act as if we must earn God’s grace and we still get annoyed when God is equally gracious to those who have clearly done nothing to earn it.
God is not fair, God is generous. Does that mean that we can get up to no good like the Ninevites, or sit around idle like the workers who came late, and still expect God to be gracious and merciful? Well, yes, it does.
But God’s generosity does not stop there: God longs for us to be part of the abundant outpouring of grace and mercy. The owner of the vineyard keeps on hiring workers, not because there is more work but because there are more workers. God sends Jonah to save the Ninevites but Jonah is the one God is trying to save.
Whether we are the first, or the last and whether we like it or not, it is the working together that is its own reward.”
FIRST READING
Jonah 3:10-4-11
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
The Lord God appointed a bush and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort, so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?
GOSPEL
Matthew 20:1-16
For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.
